PINE LAWN, Mo. – For weeks, trash has piled up in a Pine Lawn driveway after a company bought the house and started renovating. Frustrated neighbors put FOX 2 News in touch with Alderwoman Dionne Jones.

“She has to deal with the smell of this, the fact that people come in late at night, late at night rummaging through this stuff like they’re shopping for items. What’s the high cost of that?” Jones said.

The driveway is littered with construction materials including doors, roof shingles, and lumber. But the problem has been made worse by people starting to dump their own personal waste in the pile as well.

Jones says the company that owns the property did have a dumpster on the property, but it quickly got filled up, leaving no room for the remaining construction materials. Now, the city cannot find the property owner to get them to clean up the property. It has issued violations and notices on the door but with no luck so far.

“It’s all municipalities where we’re having problems getting those LLCs to take care of their property,” Pine Lawn Mayor Terry Epps said.

FOX 2 pulled property records. The property is owned by QLM Enterprises LLC, with an address listed at a local storage unit facility. We went to the address the city has on file for the property manager where we found another pile of trash behind a home. A man told FOX 2 that he did not work for the property manager, but also repeatedly refused to say who he did work for and why he was at the property.

Eventually, someone who called himself “Derek” called FOX 2 from a restricted phone number claiming to represent QLM Enterprises LLC and promising to clean up the Pine Lawn property by the end of the week. But when asked, Derek would not provide a last name.

“What I don’t understand is why the city won’t clean it up and simply fine the owner,” Alderwoman Jones said.

Mayor Epps said that is an option, but he does not want to do it yet.

“The last resort is we’ll go on that property, which is going to take us a lot of manpower, manhours, equipment. We got to rent dumpsters. You saw the mess over there. That’s coming out of taxpayers’ pockets,” he said.

FOX 2 will follow up to see if it is cleaned up this week as promised.